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Jeff Just curious
You mentioned the fact that the uniterian church was dispised by christians and muslims alike. Since I mess around with quite a bit of biblical research stuff I was wondering why this sect was considered non christian. Did they simply deny the existance JC? Or deny the trinity? I'm also a uniterian but JC is more our hero,messiah, the main man the son of God but not God it self.

That pretty far off the topic of retrievers even for the "political" forum on RTF. I am not a theologian but will try to give a brief overview.

Unitarianism has, like most religions, changed a lot over time. When the pagan emperor, Constantine was looking for a state religion to help unify the remains of the Roman Empire, he organized the Niacene Council to encourage Christians to agree on the tenets of their faith. A major focus was on the question of the deity of Christ as encompassed in the concept of the Trinity. While all of these early Christians revered Jesus and his teachings, there was disagreement over whether he was a great prophet or in fact the son of God. The majority opted for the latter belief and those that rejected this notion of a deified Jesus were expelled from the community of Christians. These "rejects" survived in eastern Europe but did not openly adopt the Unitarian title until the 16th century in Transylvania when King Sigmound legalized the practice of Unitarianism. That didn't help when he died a few years later and his successors forced the religion back into hiding. These early practitioners were called Unitarians because of their belief that there was only one God and their rejection of the concept of the Trinity as a violation of this one-God concept.

Unitarianism was rejected as a heresy by the Catholic Church and by the early protestant churches -- hence the burning of a Unitarian philosopher in Geneva by the Calvinists. By the 18th century, in what was called the Age of Enlightenment, Unitarianism began to flourish in England and later in America, particularly in Massachusetts, where Harvard eventually evolved into what was essentially a Unitarian divinity school. At that time it was viewed as a religion of reason rather than faith since it relied on personal experience as the basis of belief. Original scriptures were seen as testimonies of personal experience. Creedal interpretations of these scriptures were rejected completely. Many also viewed the "scripture" as historic documents that had to be read with the same critical view that you might apply in reading someone's diary. From that perspective, the "Jefferson Bible" was actually a cut and paste rewrite of portions of the New Testament by Thomas Jefferson in which he eliminated what be deemed to be non-credible descriptions of miraculous acts to include only what Jefferson believed was an accurate description of "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth". Unitarians also generally rejected the notion of salvation through belief and the notion of salvation throgh predestination, favoring the notion that salvation depended on acting in a manner consistent with Christ's teachings. The religion continued its evloution through the 19th and 20th centuries. Notable Unitarians included:

The modern Unitarian church, which merged with the Universalist Church, is rightly seen as a bastion of social liberalism. My father joined in 1941 as his form of doing penance for my grandfather's membership in the KKK. At that time, the Unitarian Church was one of the only churches taking a strong public stand on civil rights. Unitarians were also among the first to welcome gay and trans-gendered members and to permit same sex marriages.

More (and probably more accurate) information on Unitarianism is available on the website of the Unitarian-Universalist Association ay http://uua.org. Please accept that I have written this only in an effort to anse=wer a question and not in an effort to proselytize or convert anyone.

However, when historical revisionists talk about the religious beliefs of our forefathers, I encourage you to remember that many of our most important forefathers were in fact Unitarians who rejected the most fundamental tenets of what we now call Christianity (I had to say this to make my comments political).

Proselytizing is routinely done by many of our religions. When I was a kid, both Baptists and Methodists competed in their efforts to save my sister and me. People came often to ask my parents if they could take us to sunday school or to revival meetings. My fifth grade teacher, Miss Gee, had us read out loud from the bible every day. Jews were required to select readings from the New Testament so that they could find Jesus (We are talking about a public school, not a private one. I was ecstatic when such activities were outlawed in public schools.). I would call all of these activities proselytizing.

In a prior life, I was liaison between City Hall and a devout religious group in New York City. They were working hard to build their community and pooled funds for economic development. They would buy the corner buildings on each block in the area they lived because, as one of the leaders explained to me, the person who controls the corners controls the block. The religious/economic council would make loans to members of the community to start businesses as long as they employed others from the community. When young adults married, the economic council helped them to secure their first aprtments. When they were ready, they would be lent money to buy an apartment building in the community where they would live and rent out space to new members of the community. In this manner, they expanded their religious community, stabilized an otherwise dangerous area of the city, and grew politically and financially stronger. Their culture was insular but they formed a valuable -- and sometimes controversial -- element in the City's cultural landscape. They were in no way a threat.

Although not as organized, similar patterns were used by some of the Italian communities where I lived in Brooklyn, with social clubs (e.g., Citadini di Pozzallo) that were based on ties from the villages where immigrants had originated. Korean communities have also been very effective in building on ties within their communities to help the communities grow stronger. When my niece wanted to connect with her own Chinese roots, she became part of a neighborhood Chinese cultural organization in St. Paul where she learned the language, learned traditional dances and celebrations, and connected with other Chinese and Chinese American youth.

What you are describing in Dearborn is very much in the tradition of American immigration over the last 100+ years. I do not believe it represents any kind of threat.

What you have described is not what is going on in countries with substantial Islamic immigrant populations or growing Islamic populations. They demand that their host country accommodate them. How is this the same as what you described above?

I disagree. Coming into a country and asking them to exchange their culture and religion for yours is not reasonable at all.

Sorry, I come late to this discussion, and maybe somebody later in this thread has already brought this up... but I know many Native Americans who would agree with you, K. Bullock, many.

E Pluribis Unum... Out of many... one. It worked for "The Greatest Generation" seventy years ago, and briefly seven years ago, post 9/11, and it may again. Depends on the challenges we face, and how we meet them.

JD

One cannot reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into. - Jonathan Swift

I know of only one religion that has been more violent in its pursuit of new converts than Islam -- Christianity. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have burned, pillaged and raped their way to dominance. They have destroyed culture after culture -- most in this hemisphere -- to promote the glory of God. The only forces that were able to resist Christian dominance of the Mediterranean were the forces of Islam, leading to a stalemate between Spain and Northern Africa at one end and between the Baltics and Turkey at the other.

Happily, we have left the worst of those battles behind. However, I deeply distrust religious zealots of all flavors because they always seem willing to fall back into religious war. They are so convinced of the correctness of their belief in God (or Gods) that they condemn non-believers as evil and/or damned.

I don't have to go to Saudi Arabia to hear that belief. I simply have to turn my radio to almost any of the conservative Christian radio stations in this country. In each case, the justification for intolerance is simple -- we're right, they're not. In my mind, a primary mission of our government is, on one hand, to protect the right of each group to believe in its own superiority if it wishes while, on the other hand, making sure that those groups are never able to translate their self-proclaimed superiority into government reinforced authority.

The idiots "discovering" the secret Islamic conspiracy to destroy good Christians are the same idiots who used to talk about the secret Catholic conspiracy to force good Protestants to worship all those funny statues of saints. They are also the same idiots who blamed all financial woes on evil little Jewish men using their control of banks to steal our wealth. In my mind, there is no one more dangerous than a person "defending" God. I don't care whose God they claim to represent.

Personally, I say let the gods take care of themselves while the rest of us work on living together in peace. In this country, diversity is not something new, it was a matter of our original "intelligent design."

I know of only one religion that has been more violent in its pursuit of new converts than Islam -- Christianity. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have burned, pillaged and raped their way to dominance. They have destroyed culture after culture -- most in this hemisphere -- to promote the glory of God. The only forces that were able to resist Christian dominance of the Mediterranean were the forces of Islam, leading to a stalemate between Spain and Northern Africa at one end and between the Baltics and Turkey at the other.

Happily, we have left the worst of those battles behind. However, I deeply distrust religious zealots of all flavors because they always seem willing to fall back into religious war. They are so convinced of the correctness of their belief in God (or Gods) that they condemn non-believers as evil and/or damned.

I don't have to go to Saudi Arabia to hear that belief. I simply have to turn my radio to almost any of the conservative Christian radio stations in this country. In each case, the justification for intolerance is simple -- we're right, they're not. In my mind, a primary mission of our government is, on one hand, to protect the right of each group to believe in its own superiority if it wishes while, on the other hand, making sure that those groups are never able to translate their self-proclaimed superiority into government reinforced authority.

The idiots "discovering" the secret Islamic conspiracy to destroy good Christians are the same idiots who used to talk about the secret Catholic conspiracy to force good Protestants to worship all those funny statues of saints. They are also the same idiots who blamed all financial woes on evil little Jewish men using their control of banks to steal our wealth. In my mind, there is no one more dangerous than a person "defending" God. I don't care whose God they claim to represent.

Personally, I say let the gods take care of themselves while the rest of us work on living together in peace. In this country, diversity is not something new, it was a matter of our original "intelligent design."

In this country, diversity is not something new, it was a matter of our original "intelligent design

Ha! Unitarian my foot, You sound like a good Calvinist.

And your sentiment is good with me, except there are some who will not let us live in pesace.

I think you misunderstand me. Whether someone is Christian or not means little to me(well in some respects). And I agree that the strength of this country is it's diversity. In that respect the Roman empire was similar and recognized the need for someone to become a citizen while keeping their cultural identity intact.

I don't think I have once said," keep the Muslims out" or Brown eye bad Blue eye good. Those are not my core beliefs.

And your point about the violence of Christian's that have come before us has been addressed. That was more a sign of the times they lived in rather than a tenet of the Christian religion. And I am not even trying to compare Christianity to Islam.
Islam is a religion that at its core is violent it's teachings are violent and the aim of Islam is imperialism. That is the point. And we are in denial of these facts that is the other point.

Political Correctness is keeping western nations from from having an honest dialogue about something that is a very real danger to our individual freedoms. The spread of radical Islam is a danger. And to deny that without even trying to understand Islam is a little silly.

I am trying to find a link to an honest to God, Islamic reformer in the spirit of Martin Luther. She spoke at our campus a while back. "A liberal Campus BTW"
She is a very interesting lady that has challenged the extremism in her own community .And guess what she lives under the threat of death for her views.

I don't have to go to Saudi Arabia to hear that belief. I simply have to turn my radio to almost any of the conservative Christian radio stations in this country. In each case, the justification for intolerance is simple -- we're right, they're not. In my mind, a primary mission of our government is, on one hand, to protect the right of each group to believe in its own superiority if it wishes while, on the other hand, making sure that those groups are never able to translate their self-proclaimed superiority into government reinforced authority.

Besides the bad theology I cannot stand their crazy inflections. And they are not groups. They are someone who somebody gave a microphone.

Besides the bad theology I cannot stand their crazy inflections. And they are not groups. They are someone who somebody gave a microphone.

Are you talking about the calls to prayer from the mosques or the calls to prayer from the Christian radio stations?

I'm not accusing you of being anti-Muslim per se, but I do think your understanding of the the Muslim religion is incomplete. All of our religions include elements that do not fit in today's world and/or that are subject to interpretation to support peace or war. In my experience, Islam is no more or less war like than Christianity. The good or evil comes from the hearts of the "believers" not the Koran or the Bible.